The lecture and fellowship lunch are free and open to the public, starting at 12:00 on Wednesday, March 2 in Yale Divinity School’s common room. RSVP to joy@yale.edu to reserve a place. For those unable to make it to the event, the lecture will be broadcast at http://livestream.com/yaledivinityschool/ymi.

For a full list of this semester’s lecture topics and speakers, download the schedule here.

Youth ministry is sometimes tempted to turn youth worship into liturgical lollapaloozas. Balloons, bands, smoke machines, and sub-woofers all conspire to jolt kids into a joyous transcendent buzz. While some of our best friends play in rock bands plus one of us even owns a subwoofer, we wonder about the long term effects of worship as lollapalooza for forming disciples of Jesus. How, for example, do youth learn to imagine the Spirit redeeming the very ordinary hurts and hopes of their daily lived realities? Surprisingly, Duke Divinity School’s Youth Academy for Christian Formation has found youth to be hungry for basic liturgical faire: the Word proclaimed and interpreted and the Feast shared at Christ’s Table. They tell us that practicing word and sacrament in worship is critical for their imagining and getting involved in God’s saving work beyond the sanctuary. Many now report living into Christian vocations as adults. They have discovered that joy is more about living than buzzing.